From one side, I'm hearing that it is very illegal, and that I could get sued. On the other site, people are telling me that technically, it is legal if it is unlicensed as long as I distribute it for no profit. Any one have any information regarding this? I am holding off on hosting anything before I get a definite response.
From what I understand, hosting something which is unlicensed would be illegal. It really does not matter if you do it for money or offer it for free.
You are probably talking about "fair use" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use Commercial use can be define as a site that generates any type of revenue, including adsense, sale of products, advertising, donations for bandwidth, etc. Fair Use can be a very grey area and a lot of people who have claimed it have spend huge amounts in legal costs. Unless you are just wanting to do a pure fan site that will not generate any revenue, it's probably not even worth it - and even then, nothing is stopping the copyright holder from suing you. Getting permission is really the only way to do it without any risk.